In many diverse types of industries, business entities are frequently required to exchange large volumes of information with other entities. Historically, this information has been encapsulated through various media, including paper, microfiche, magnetic tapes, computer disks, or other electronic storage devices. Currently, the information stored within these various media is often captured electronically and is stored in one or more electronic storage archives. Typically, these electronic storage archives allow long term archival of document bitmap images, computer generated reports, office documents such as word processing documents and spreadsheets, audio and video files, etc.
The hardware typically incorporated in an electronic archive is comprised of one or more general purpose computer and storage devices. The hardware may be operated and accessed by software comprising an operating system, database management systems, hierarchical storage management software (HSM), and archive management software. Often, large corporations require geographically diverse heterogeneous archival systems in order to support the various operations of the corporation.
A business may manage an archiving system for storing information transmitted by multiple organizations. For example, a bank may centrally manage an archive that stores information transmitted by internal customers, such for example, as a mortgage division, a commercial loan division, or a small business loan division. The archiving system may also store information transmitted by external customers, such as independent businesses using banking services. Each internal or external customer may act as a transmitting organization and may send information in a particular format. The archiving system may store information in a format that differs from the transmitted format. Each archive within the archiving system may have specific formatting requirements and may store resources only in these predetermined formats. Furthermore, the transmitting organizations and other organizations may ultimately require retrieval of the stored information. Retrieving organizations, which may also include external and internal customers, each may each require retrieval in a specified format that differs from the required storage format.
With the escalating use of electronic communication modes, organizations have become increasingly demanding with respect to transmission of information, particularly with respect to images. Demands have become bidirectional in that organizations frequently both request transmittal and retrieval of information simultaneously. Furthermore when retrieving information, organizations may make requests for both metadata file changes and image file format changes.
Currently existing archiving and data flow management systems often provide requested resources in a standard output format. Some systems are available that process customer input in the customer's format and convert the transmitted information to metadata files. However, these systems do not otherwise change format and do not change format in accordance with customer requests. Furthermore, these systems do not convert image format even if requested by internal or external customers.
Thus, a system is needed that is capable of facilitating exchange of data with customers, particularly with customers requiring transmission and receipt of large volumes of documents that include items such as images in various formats. Thus, a system is needed that stores and implements a conversion protocol for exchange of data between two or more parties such that once that the conversion protocol exists, the conversion occurs automatically. The system should be bi-directional to allow import and export of resources.